How to Fend Off Financial Trolls

Note: It’s a rare thing, but it happens once or twice a year: Life has reared its ugly head, and there’s no fresh story for you this morning. Instead, enjoy this classic from the Get Rich Slowly archives.

Money is more about mind than it is about math — that’s one of the fundamental precepts of this site. If you improve your self-esteem, if you improve your mental attitude, if you improve your knowledge, you will improve your finances. To this end, it’s important to avoid negative messages about money. It’s difficult to improve your mental attitude when you’re besieged by financial trolls.

What are financial trolls? In a recent article, Steve Pavlina shared five wealth lessons, the last of which was: financial trolls must be shown no mercy. Pavlina writes:

A financial troll is a close cousin to the forum troll, except that financial trolls strive to sabotage your financial pursuits. These trolls can be internal or external. They’re the people who make comments like, â€œWealthy people are so greedy. They only care about themselves and will take advantage of anyone to make money.â€ Financial trolls are also the internal voices that say, â€œIf you make too much money, people will judge you harshly for it. They’ll assume that’s all you care about.â€

Coping with external trolls
When I started Get Rich Slowly, I wanted people to like and agree with everything I wrote. Any time I received a negative comment, I took time to exchange e-mail with the person who left it. Here’s an example of an actual criticism I once received: “I would love [this site] if only the privileged would acknowledged how lucky and privileged they are and how their ‘advice’ applies to only other privileged kids.” I tried to carry on a conversation with the commenter, but nothing I could say would satisfy him — in his mind I was a rich jerk and nothing could change that.

I realized that 95% of these people aren’t interested in a rational exchange of ideas. They’re external financial trolls. They have chips on their shoulders, they’re clinging to preconceived notions, or they just want to argue. They’re not worth my time. Other examples of behavior you might see in external trolls include:

You might have a goal, and have a plan to pursue it despite the risk involved. The troll in your life focuses on the obstacles, on the reasons you can’t achieve it: “You don’t know what you’re doing”, “Think of all the things that might go wrong”, etc.

Perhaps you admire other successful people. Trolls often resent success: “Warren Buffett go rich on the back of others”, “Bill Gates is a crook”, “Rich people don’t work for their money”

Some trolls complain all the time. They complain about their jobs, they complain about their lives, they complain that they don’t have money. They complain, but they rarely take action. Complainers are poisonous.

Defeating most external trolls is straightforward. Because they’re not internal, you can usually just remove yourself from the situation. Ignore the troll. Change the conversation. Leave the room. Hang up the phone. Do not argue — as Pavlina notes, any time you argue with a troll, the troll wins. Do not engage the troll.

Coping with internal trolls
Internal trolls are more insidious than their external brethren. Because they are a part of you, eradicating them takes self-discipline. Examples of internal trolls include:

Procrastination — “I’ll start next week”, “I’ll worry about this later”, I can start saving next month — this month I’ll buy an XBox.”

Rationalization — “Buying just one pair of shoes won’t blow my budget”, “I’m out with my friends — I should join the fun”, “I should reward myself for how well I’ve been doing lately”

Barriers — “I don’t know how to open an IRA”, “It’s too much bother to set up automatic deposits”, “Sure I could call around for lower rates, but I don’t like talking on the phone”

Conquering internal trolls can be non-intuitive. Most are a product of self-doubt, which is best combated through exercise, discipline, positive social interaction, and a healthy diet. Seriously. The following can also help:

Talk back to yourself! It makes sense to avoid arguments with external trolls, but confronting internal trolls is an excellent tactic.

Educate yourself. Learn about money. I resisted investing for a long time until I learned just how easy it was to open an IRA.

Find a mentor, a coach, or an advisor. Learn from others.

I have much more trouble with internal trolls than I do with external trolls. They’re a constant threat.

Know when to seek help
Some trolls are difficult to defeat. What do you do about a spouse who insists on sabotaging your financial security? How do you deal with your own compulsive shopping? Problems like these may require the assistance of a trained professional: an accountant, a lawyer, or a psychologist. The important thing is to deal with them. Until you defeat them, they’ll only hold you back, preventing you from achieving success.

I’ve got no problem with external trolls. Those I can easily dismiss and the naysayers (and whiners and complainers) they are. Everyone has an internal troll though. Mine gets grumpy from time to time, and shouts a little louder than normal. Going back to basics is a good way to shut him the heck up.

Great post!! I sooo agree with what you are saying. Especially the external trolls. For me they are the most difficult to deal with. What we found is that owning something that is very visible and clearly old and cheap, like an old car, helps in avoiding most of the discussions. If somebody accuses me of being rich I ask him if he has seen my car. A 12 year old Volkswagen is not a sign of being rich. And saves money!

I’ve found a great way to defeat (somewhat) the financial trolls in my life. Prove them wrong! It takes time, but its working. They said we couldn’t pay off our debt, we did! They said “everybody has a car payment”, and we said, “we don’t!” Now they are saying “There is no way you can pay off your mortgage in the next 5 years!” And we are right on track for a 2015 payoff! You don’t have to argue when the truth is on your side!

Of course, these trolls will always find something to be negative about, so that’s why I said SOMEWHAT defeating them.

Oh, how I understand! I’m married to a spendthrift; the more money I free up through frugal living, the more he spends rather than paying off debt or saving. Unfortunately, choices I made long ago make it difficult, but not impossible to free myself from this situation.

Sorry about that! It must be very frustrating! Is there any way you can have a “hidden” bufferzone? In my past I lived with someone like that and I kept putting aside the change and some more from time to time in places it could not be found: terrible, I know, but it surely made those “end of the month agony” rather easier to fend off… also, I shared an app with friends in my study days and to avoid “suprises” when bills came we had one box for telephone expences where we dropped a coin every time we made a call; we put aside a certain sum for house neccesities like soap and toilet paper and basic dryfood such as rice and pasta etc… basic line; look after yourself!

My husband is a troll, a loveable troll, but a troll nonetheless. Things he was vehemently against when we first started talking about our money as “ours”:

1) Having a budget.
2) Saving money.
3) Tracking our spending.

I created a budget anyway, and provided it to him. I had to make it easy for him to use and see value in. It had to make his life easier/better. He pays attention to it now, and uses it to determine when we’ll have money for extras and vacations and the like.

I started saving money for the both of us. I have several different accounts that I put money into every month/paycheck/opportunity, and I consider that “our” savings. From time to time we’ll have things we want to discretionarily spend on, and I simply tell him that I have no money for it, and if he wants that experience/toy/meal he’ll have to fork it up.

I’ve recently gotten him onto the savings bandwagon, though, by convincing him that we can’t take vacations or do any of the extra things that he and our son may want to do unless we can save the money for it before hand. I am the only one with a credit card, so we pay for everything up front. He’s started setting aside money for vacations and such out of his own paychecks!

I couldn’t believe how much grief I got over wanting to track our grocery spending, even when I offered to do all the work by just collecting the receipts. He didn’t even want to be responsible for handing them over to me after he got home! Sheesh! At any rate, he’s a horrible receipt destroyer, and I always have access to whatever receipts are wadded up and laying around.

My hypothesis about his anxiety about doing anything with his finances but living paycheck to paycheck is threefold:

1) No one taught him how to manage his money. His parents have always been well off, but have never saved for a rainy day (or retirement, for that matter). He simply did not see a need before I brought it up.
2) He is/was fearful of someone taking over his money and telling him how and what to spend it on. This is currently being worked on by both of us. I have to make sure to give him his space and not ask too many “nagging” questions, and he has to open up a little and participate in the diaglogue. It’s a bumpy road, but we’re working on it.
3) He did not want to change. He didn’t see a need as he was not immediately suffering for his financial missteps. It’s hard to convince someone to make a scary change when they don’t see a problem here and now. For this I had to be a little smart about when to push for changes and when to allow the inevitable to happen so that I could use it for a later discussion.

Now, if only I can get him to look at the master copy budget at home with me, instead of him only looking at it at work. :)

Chris & Rozann – mileage may vary, but IMHO the best way to handle a spendthrift/financially negative partner is to keep money separate. My DH is a wonderful man but is unable to shift poor (literally) attitudes about money. Thus, not only is my checking account separate, but my savings (and credit cards) are too. He vaguely knows they exist, but no real detail (in the event I died, he’d find the info on a memory stick I always keep with my computer). If he can’t access them, he can’t spend the money.

While I believe one shouldn’t hide debt from a partner, there are times when it is necessary to hide assets from a partner. Fortunately it’s not that extreme in my case, but the less DH sees, the less he spends and the less stress I have.

This article was new to me too! Great tips for avoiding negativity inside and out.

I especially like the point about remembering that most external trolls aren’t interested in an exchange of ideas. It reminded me of a tweet I read on @unmarketing about knowing when to draw the line with negative people:

I had to censor it otherwise I feared it might get stuck in moderation, but you get the picture :) The take away for me is that sometimes you can’t change other people’s opinions of you and you have to let go.

I was raised to be a “nice girl” so I spent a lot of time in my life trying to reason with the trolls. But you are correct, they don’t want discussion and their minds are not open to change. Now I just divide the world into “My People” who love me and are positive, and “Not My People” who don’t and aren’t. Then I can happily delete the “Nots” i.e., trolls, from my email lists and my life. Wow, did life ever get better when I started doing that!

I would like to know whether it is ok to hide assets (small but important) to deal with possible emergencies if one live with a spendthrift and it is difficult to get the person to the negotiation table, so to speak? if there are other solutions I would like to hear abt them as being dishonest is not in my liking but what to do…

Although I agree with you for the most part – I worked for awhile as a small business lending company years ago. I’d have people come in with the most impractical, off the wall ideas that would never make money. For the most part, these were people that wanted some kind of lifestyle business that there just wasn’t a market for. So I had to be the troll. My guess is that maybe 10% of businesses ended up getting a loan and approximately 20% of those businesses actually made money over time.

People who are driven and internally motivated will succeed despite what anyone else says. Sometimes because of it. I tend to be the kind of person that if someone tells me I can’t pull something off, it renews my motivation so I can say “you just watch me.”

I welcome criticism of my ideas IF someone knows enough to actually pull the plan apart and show me where I might not be thinking things through properly.

I know someone that’s in their mid-40’s (with the accompanying mid-life crisis), have been constantly maxed out on CC’s since they’ve had them with a negative net worth and no retirement savings yet wants to quit their decent paying job to travel for 6 months out of the year. Is it trollish for me to tell them that their idea is stupid? They think it is. Fortunately most people aren’t this delusional.

I can see where you’re coming from – and I understand. I was just like you and I guess there are no right answers.

But psychologically speaking, this is interesting. The thing is, every plan – no matter how well-thought-out, can be torn down by a troll. It’s not a question of IF, but a question of WHEN and HOW.

And while you may view someone’s plan as delusional, they may not agree with you. It’s called the ownership bias.

Having said that, some of the world’s most successful people are labelled “delusional”. Colonel Sanders was broke yet he spent his retirement peddling his chicken reciepe. Sylvester Stallone was down to selling his dog and doing porn, yet he refused to sell his script for Rocky unless he was cast in it.

As a creditor, I absolutely agree that we need to look at the numbers – 99.9% of people out there just aren’t made for business.

But as a person, I think anyone should pursue their dreams no matter how delusional it looks like.

After all, what I think this post missed is that most trolls are well-intentioned. They just didn’t want to see you hurt. By protecting you, however, they’ve also unintentionally limit you.

It’s not easy to distinguish in real life who are the trolls and who are the “advisers”.

That’s the thing Andre – I tend to believe, that without some kind of *epiphany* – most people are not going to change their modus operandi overnight. It’s just not human nature. There’s something to be said for “show me”. Don’t just talk – DO something different.

And no matter what, it’s part of growing up to follow the beat of your own drummer, not somebody else’s. If you’re that easily discouraged that some people saying you can’t do it is enough to stop you, you don’t belong in business – or doing a lot of other things.

Follow your dreams, yes – but plan it out so that you’re not eating friskies (or KFC) when you’re 90 for God’s sake.

In his excellent book “The War of Art,” Steven Pressfield terms these internal trolls “the Resistance.” He describes many of the insidious ways these internal trolls can sabotage you, as well as strategies for tackling them. Artist or not, highly recommend checking it out.

Ok the advice here is very good for some people, but there are so many people who are stuck and I dont think that they will be able to get out, this book addresses a lot of the problems of the lower class.
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

I agree some people are ‘stuck,’ Jacob — but the people mentioned in the book you’re citing have often made deliberate choices that explode any other options they can take. Even the author of this book self-destructs herself, makes crappy choices…then whines about it.
A better read would be Adam Shepard’s SCRATCH BEGINNINGS:http://www.amazon.com/Scratch-Beginnings-Search-American-Dream/dp/0979692601

And I know where the Nickel and Dimed people have been — I worked for Wal-Mart for nearly two years, when we absolutely needed the money. I’ve also waitressed and cleaned houses. Read Adam’s book, instead.

The comment about privileged kids writing for others really cracked me up-I remember when a core of us started personal financial blogs back in 2006.
Most weren’t “privileged” and have since done well by helping others. Thanks for the article.

I wonder how people define “privileged” . I didn’t consider myself privileged when I was growing up — until I started working/volunteering with teenagers and realized how lucky I was to have two loving parents, a decent home and no worries about where the next meal was coming from. It was a modest life, to be sure, but I can see how some people would consider that privileged.

I’m not saying that commenter is right — I certainly don’t agree with him/her! — but I can understand why someone might look at J.D.’s or other financial bloggers lives as privileged. Racking up major debt on non-necessities is still a privileged life compared to someone living near or below the poverty line.

People have a real aversion to being called privileged. I know I did. But I was.

I don’t see that man as a troll. I think that is the wrong way to view such a reaction. Yes, it was negative and self defeating. But it is easier to believe that you can be successful when you’ve seen it in your life.

I see this man as someone who feels there’s no advice out there for HIM. And really, there’s not all that much. It’s easier to tell people to give up fast food or a latte than to really talk about the difficulties and realities of their situation. Being poor is HARD. We often want to ignore that because it makes us uncomfortable. I might direct him to Donna Freeman’s sight or other UBER frugal sites.

I find after reading the articles about willpower and the information that has been linked here, I am MUCH more sympathetic to the lives of those who live on very little. (I was always sympathetic, but now I feel I understand why people do things like get a meal at McDonalds that they really can’t afford.) It must be mentally and emotionally exhausting.

I don’t come from money, but that doesn’t change what makes good financial sense. I’m not sure there’s any hope for people that don’t get that. They just want to take our their circumstances on someone else rather than rising to the challenge.

The advice presented here at Get Rich Slowly has definitely helped me take advantage of my limited income, and make up for all the debt I had to accumulate to attend a nice private university despite not coming from money. Some days I regret taking on that debt, but not growing up with money was certainly no excuse. We make our own destinies, in the end.

Confronting the financial demons, both internally and externally, is indeed an important part of successful investment. Anything you can do to increase your awareness of your financial situation will contribute positively to the bottom line. Thanks for the insights.

I have a financial troll in my life. She’s just a mere acquaintance I see once or twice a year. We share the same career, but she can never seem to accept I am able to make a living just freelancing at it. She is always looking for the “hole” in my story.

Last interaction, her “ah-ha” moment was when she discovered I had to pay for my own health insurance.

Wow, I read this post at the perfect moment. I NEEDED to read this post right now. I’m so glad I found it.

I have a hard time with external trolls. Generally, I take the approach that when someone criticizes you, you should listen closely because there may be truth to what they’re saying. In other words, I’m in the habit of accepting all criticism as “constructive” and really internalizing it.

This worked until I started blogging. Now there are people who — for lack of a better term — are internet bullies. They call names and say all kinds of mean and hurtful things. And these things stay on my mind. I’m trying to develop that ‘thick skin’ against the trolls, but it takes time …. lots of time … and I hope my skin will thicken soon.

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My name is J.D. Roth. I started Get Rich Slowly in 2006 to document my personal journey as I dug out of debt. Then I shared while I learned to save and invest. Twelve years later, I've managed to reach early retirement! I'm here to help you master your money — and your life. No scams. No gimmicks. Just smart money advice to help you get rich slowly. Read more.

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